I had to go from 49th street to 25th street to pick up a framing job at Minegawa Art lines. The place is on 11th avenue, I was on 8th avenue, so a cab seemed like the fastest way to get from A to B. (8-11/49-25) There is even a cab lane on 49th street, so I just stood there and hailed a cab from 8th Avenue. A cab drew by and stopped about 100 yards behind me, a bit as if we were on a highway and I were a hitchhiker. I got in, told the cabby the directions and waited for us to go. The tape went on, reminding me buckle up if I wanted to go for the gold medal, I buckled up, cabby pressed the taximeter, a red 2.00 lit up on the display and he opened his door. He leaned out and looked, as it seemed, under the cab. For a good New York 10 seconds or so. He then closed the door and asked me where I wanted to go.
“we can still go to 25th and 11th avenue if you want. Is everything OK out there?”. I said with a full smile, because it was quite funny So he presses the taximeter button again, realizes that he must have pressed it some time ago, looks at me, as if I had pressed it somehow secretly while he was not looking, and off we go. He took a good route 11th avenue. The ride was a few minutes, so I could take a look at the man behind the wheel. He was a heavy man in his late 30’s. Probably somewhere from the Bahamas? He was listening to this frightening radio station. The monotone voice on the radio seemed to come from another dimension and the things that the voice was saying were all about God, and how God will be good to us, but not really, only under certain circumstances. Es followed a song. We arrived on 25th street, I told him to pull over to the left and gave him $6. I asked for the receipt. He took the money, slowed down, but kept driving. I saw my destination go by, we were turning the corner. I leaned into his compartment. “It is fine, you can stop right here, on the left, if you don’t mind? Could you just stop?.” “It is corn”, he answered, showing me a half chewed off piece of corn. “That is very nice, but we are here, you can stop, let me out, I just gave you the money too, by the way...”
He was quite surprised. He looked at his other hand. He was holding the money. (He drove using the corn hand.) We stopped. We were in the middle of 24th street block. He had stopped so abruptly, that the cars behind us barely made it. I heard the sound of tires and many, many curses. He gave me some of his receipts. I wished him good luck. Boy, he needed good luck today. Hope he is fine and got some sleep by now. It was not looking good. The corn did not help.
(It was probably his third shift in a row, poor guy.)